Education
- PhD, BITS-Pilani (10th August, 2009)
- MPhil, BITS-Pilani
- MA, University of Rajasthan
About the Faculty
Professor Sushila Shekhawat is Professor of English and Communication Studies in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at BITS Pilani, where her work spans film studies, cultural studies, ecocriticism, and visual culture, with particular emphasis on cinema, environmental humanities, gender, and Global South frameworks. Her scholarship moves beyond conventional literary studies into interdisciplinary explorations of film, media, ecology, and cultural representation, positioning her as an important voice in contemporary humanities research in India.
Her research examines how cinema and visual narratives shape understandings of landscape, gender, identity, and environmental crisis. She works extensively in film studies, especially in relation to ecocinema, desert humanities, Anthropocene studies, and representations of space in the Global South. Her recent edited volume, Desertscapes in the Global South and Beyond (co-edited with Rayson K. Alex and Swarnalatha Rangarajan), reflects this intellectual trajectory. Published by Taylor & Francis / Routledge in 2023, the book explores Anthropocene naturecultures across desert biomes and investigates issues of desertification, indigeneity, ecology, gender, and re-inhabitation across regions including India, Australia, China, South Africa, Brazil, and Mexico. The volume contributes significantly to the emerging field of desert humanities and reimagines desert landscapes as sites of biodiversity, memory, and ecological accountability rather than emptiness or absence.
Professor Shekhawat is also currently leading a major externally funded research project titled, “Digitization of Environmentally Sustainable Practices of the Bishnoi Community for Wider Knowledge Dissemination and Effectiveness.” The project has been funded by the Department of Science and Technology under the DST-SHRI scheme. It reflects her continued engagement with interdisciplinary humanities research that bridges environment, society, and cultural production.
Her publications include peer-reviewed journal articles, edited chapters, and scholarly essays in national and international forums addressing film studies, ecocriticism, women’s writing, cultural memory, and environmental humanities. Her work often explores cinematic representations of landscape, ecological precarity, and gendered space, alongside broader concerns of pedagogy and cultural interpretation. She brings together close reading, visual
analysis, and theoretical frameworks drawn from ecocriticism, feminist theory, and postcolonial studies.
Her academic projects frequently engage with environmental imagination in cinema, representations of deserts and marginal geographies, and the politics of place-making in contemporary visual culture. She has supervised postgraduate and doctoral research across film studies, gender studies, Indian writing in English, comparative literature, and cultural studies, mentoring scholars working at the intersection of narrative, ecology, and representation.
As a teacher, Professor Shekhawat is known for combining theoretical rigor with interdisciplinary accessibility. Her classrooms encourage students to read films and cultural texts as intellectual sites where questions of ethics, ecology, gender, and identity unfold. Teaching across undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral levels, she has played a major role in strengthening humanities scholarship within a science-and-technology institutional environment, particularly by foregrounding film and media studies within English studies pedagogy.
She has presented her work at national and international conferences on film studies, ecocriticism, and environmental humanities, contributing to wider scholarly conversations on climate humanities and Global South ecologies. Her academic presence reflects a commitment to making humanities research responsive to contemporary planetary concerns. At BITS Pilani, Professor Shekhawat represents a model of scholarship in which cinema, ecology, and cultural criticism intersect meaningfully. Her work continues to shape conversations around ecocinema, desert humanities, and environmental representation, positioning her among the institution’s leading scholars in film and cultural studies. Through her research, teaching, and mentorship, she exemplifies an academic practice that is globally engaged, intellectually rigorous, and deeply attentive to the ethical challenges of the present.
Spanning a career of 24 years at BITS Pilani, Prof Sushila has handled various responsibilities like Nucleus Member of Publications and Media Relations Unit, Academic and Counseling Board Member, Doctoral Advisory Committee member for PhD scholars, Doctoral Research Committee Member, Member of Department Committee on Academics, Senate Member since August 2018, Member of the Library committee from 2005 to 2006 and in 2017, Member of BITSCAN - a semester Magazine from 2003 to 2013 and an Editor of BITScan from 2015 to 2021. Editor for University Wide Newsletter for all the four campuses from its inception in 2018 to 2020. Presently the Faculty in charge of Institute Functions and Blossom Kids Zone.
